Slash? Bum.

First off, I loved Guns N Roses as a kid. There was other stuff booting about, but when I first heard the opening wail from “Welcome to the Jungle”, it was like a jet plane had landed and cut through my heart. The unrelenting misery that was my childhood had been torn aside with the hope of a world that looked like…fun. I can see why Rockstar were so keen on putting in GTA:Vice City, try driving downtown on a motorbike opening fire on police cars with that song blaring out of your television. It’ll take you far away from the grim boredom of whatever part of crappy suburbia you went to buy the game from in the 1st place. I promise you. Except for that awkward L2 aiming thing.

Jesus, just WATCH this thing:

Just me? Okay. I can deal with that. You know what. I even liked “The Spaghetti Incident” as well. C’MON.Down On the Farm? A PILE of utter rockness. LOOK!

Then…well, there was nothing…Slash’s SnakePit. Duff Mckegan, for fuck’s sake. I bought that album in…hope. I kind of liked some of the 1st Velvet Revolver album (Especially that rendition of “Bodies”. Again, LOOK!)

Chinese Democracy. Sigh. I can’t bring myself to say anything about it. I read each and every bit of news. I held on until I went to Fopp, bought the thing and popped it into the CD player and….
Yeah. You’ve heard it. You know.

Then the rumours started to substantiate a bit more more. Slash really was putting together a new album. Featuring IGGY and LEMMY!

Iggy:

Lemmy:

and…Fergie?:

I wasn’t really sure about it until I saw this and went BOOM! I mean, how bloody awesome is this collection of people. I even forgave Fergie for “My Humps” after watching her do Paradise City with Slash. I was pumped, man. This was going to be the album of my summer. Co-workers were going to be sick of this. Customers were going to be greeted with the refrain “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!”. That patch was being sewn onto some garment I would wear each day.

Now you can say what you like, but purely in my head, I could not see a scenario where you could say the woman in this promo is anything to do with the word “fat”.

I know we’re at a point where we’re seeing magazines saying Christina Hendricks is fat, but as I’m fond of saying, flip the argument. Can you fairly say it would be reasonable for Roadrunner to tell Slash “We’re not paying for you to tour your new record because you’ve eaten too many pies. Oh, and we want to re-cut your promo so you’re not so…exposed in it?” Who’d want to actually say that to Slash? It’s…demeaning and faintly bizarre. So why would it be okay to do that to Amanda? It’s bloody 2010 and we ought to be past this degree of superficiality where we only like the music of people we find desirable, now. When I brought this up on various networks, the general feedback I got was “Yeah, but she does the simulated rape thing/mocks the disabled/swans around Europe, so she doesn’t deserve your sympathy. Go buy the Slash thing!”

It doesn’t matter if we LIKE her music, if we find her personal behaviour abhorrent or distasteful or such. Christ, does it actually MATTER if she’s fat or not? Are we really at that point, still? I don’t agree that here, in the 21st Century, we ought to just let people be fucked up because we don’t like them. I’m becoming more and more aware of the consequences of our actions, that maybe the only real power we have left is that of disposable income. I think the implication has to be that if you’re buying a Roadrunner product, that you wilfully agree with the things they’ve done. I don’t think we’re allowed to be ignorant anymore. Maybe I’m suggesting that artists be more aware of the history of the companies they sign up with. It’s not wise to assume your pimp loves you, after all.